Respond to this statement with a “yes” or “no”: The job of a public relations agency is to get ink and airtime from the media.

For decades, the correct response was yes, because we didn't have any choice.

Back in the day, the only way to easily communicate with your public was to use mainstream media and analysts as your mouthpieces. So the public relations department and the agencies they employed spent a great deal of effort convincing editors, reporters, and analysts that your company was one worth writing about. Prior to gaining the ability to self-publish content, there wasn't an efficient way for organizations to communicate directly to the public, so we were stuck with using the media as our mouthpiece.

That's exactly what I did for nearly a decade. As the vice president of marketing for several different technology companies, I had to work with agencies to pitch our story to the media. Occasionally, we got mentioned in a newspaper or magazine article or got airtime on television or radio. But it was really hard work and damned expensive.

Today, the correct response to my statement is an emphatic no!

In our new world of real-time engagement, there are so many other ways to communicate with your publics. There has been an explosion of channels and content that organizations can use to reach their audience directly with valuable online content: videos; e-books; white papers; photos; infographics; social networks like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Snapchat; and more. Now we reach buyers directly, and they are eager to share our content.

However, many PR professionals still operate as if their only conduit is mainstream media. Most agencies still only use the traditional press release and pitch strategy.

If your organization operates in this outdated way, you've got to change the way you do business. Fortunately, you are reading the right book to help guide you with that transition.

Iliyana Stareva comes from the PR trenches. She worked in PR agencies in several countries and personally implemented many of the ideas you will read in these pages. This is no academic tome; instead, it offers practical and proven advice for reaching customers directly.

Iliyana is currently Global Partner Program Manager at HubSpot, an inbound marketing and sales software company. I've seen Iliyana in action because I serve on the advisory board of HubSpot. I frequently encounter her smart blog posts and social networking posts. In her work at HubSpot, she's met with the leaders of several hundred agencies, and she draws from those interactions to make this book perfectly positioned to help agencies make the transition.

In this new world, which Iliyana calls inbound PR, smart public relations pros realize they have a tremendous opportunity to communicate directly with their publics. They are transforming themselves and their agencies into content creators. And they are helping their clients grow their businesses.

I use these ideas myself and they work!

—David Meerman Scott

Marketing and public relations strategist, entrepreneur, and
best-selling author of 10 books, including The New Rules of Marketing & PR and Newsjacking

www.WebInkNow.com

@dmscott